The Rudolf Steiner Archive

16. The Life Course of Human Beings in the Context of Planetary Evolution

[ 1 ] Today I would like to offer you a sort of supplement and expansion of what was said in the last lecture about the course of human life. In doing so, we can discuss some more intimate matters and also add here and there something that had to be omitted from the public lecture. Above all, I would like to present this course of life to you as a grand whole. I would like to show you how human beings, as they stand before us today, are in fact a kind of microcosm, a small world; how they encompass within themselves everything that surrounds us—not only on Earth, but in a certain sense also in the starry heavens—as the law of their development.

[ 2 ] As you may recall, it has often been mentioned here that our Earth must undergo a development similar to that of human beings themselves; that our Earth was not, from the very beginning, the planet we inhabit today, but that it is, so to speak, the reincarnation of other planets. In the context of spiritual science, we speak of our Earth having evolved from a planet that preceded it—albeit an immense number of years ago—and we have often mentioned that this planet is known in occultism as the “Moon.” Not, however, because it should in any way be conflated with today’s Moon. Today’s Moon, which is a satellite of our Earth, is a kind of slag that has been cast aside as useless. You could envision the Earth’s predecessor taking shape if you could mix together everything that our Earth and the Moon are today, along with all that they contain in terms of the spiritual and the soul. You would then obtain a planet that would be, so to speak, the predecessor of our Earth—the Moon. On that Moon, from which our Earth gradually emerged, the physical human being did not yet exist in its present form; rather, a kind of physical predecessor of humanity lived on the Moon, but this predecessor was still quite animal-like. You must not imagine that what is human today was contained within the animal-like human of the Moon. That would be a materialistic conception. On the ancient Moon, beings of an animal-human nature roamed about—higher than today’s mammals, but lower than modern humans. What today exists as the soul within the human being was not yet present within them on the Moon. It was something that enveloped the human being at that time, just as their astral aura invisibly surrounds them today.

[ 3 ] I have often said that at night a person’s astral body leaves the physical body. During sleep, the astral body is connected to the physical body only by an astral cord—perceptible to the clairvoyant—in the region of the spleen. The spleen does not merely have a physical function; it also serves to mediate the connection between the physical and the spiritual-psychic aspects of the human being. The spleen is the point of connection between the physical body and the astral body. That is why you can read in any anatomy textbook that nothing is really known about the spleen. The spleen is one of those organs that lie on the borderline of the physical organs. The astral body—which, during sleep, is connected to the physical body only through the spleen—works to remove the products of fatigue from the physical body. To the clairvoyant, the sleeping person appears to be enveloped in a strange cloud that is constantly working on the physical body.

[ 4 ] What is now outside the physical body during sleep was constantly outside the physical body during the lunar stage and was connected to the universal divine world spirit. A portion of the spirituality enveloping the Moon only became separate from humanity during earthly existence. That is why occultism states: Human beings have an animal-spiritual predecessor. But modern human beings would never have developed from this on their own if you accept only materialistic conceptions. What acted from the outside had to penetrate and evolve into later stages. Thus, the animation described in the myth of Paradise truly took place on Earth. You can take this myth of Paradise literally in the broadest sense. The air that surrounds us today was, on the Moon, the true body of the human soul. At that time, the air was still entirely imbued with spirit. Just as the Earth today is surrounded only by physical air, so the Moon was surrounded by a shell permeated by soul substance. And now you understand why the air has become devoid of spirit, why it has become physical. The soul entered the body: “And God breathed into man the breath of life, and thus man became a living soul.” This is the deepest wisdom contained in this myth of Paradise.

[ 5 ] On the Moon, as a physical celestial body, human beings were therefore much less developed as physical beings, and accordingly, everything was not yet as advanced as it is today. I have also described this lunar body to you here on several occasions. Let us recall once more what this celestial body probably looked like. There were no rocks like these, no topsoil like this, and no firm ground like the one we walk on today on the Moon. This ancient Moon, as a celestial body, was a kind of semi-living being. Imagine a peat bog, but even more decomposed than today’s peat—like a plant pulp, for example, or like spinach. This pulpy mass was permeated by lignified substances. Instead of the rocks we have today, the Moon had a kind of woody foundation, and on top of that a mass that was half plant, half stone. On this mass grew beings that stood halfway between plants and animals—plant-animals, so to speak. Today’s parasitic plants are remnants of such plants as those that lived on the Moon—most notably mistletoe. It can grow only on other plants because it is a vestigial lunar plant that grew on the Moon on a kind of plant-based substrate. This explains the special significance of mistletoe in folk poetry.

[ 6 ] Above these beings, which were half plant and half animal, stood human beings. If the Moon had remained as it was back then, it would have retained all of that within itself, and the souls of human beings would never have been able to evolve the “animal-men on the Moon” into the human form we see today. The entire substance of the Moon was not suited to enabling the further development of humankind from within it. To achieve this, what is now in the Moon first had to be cast out. Only then did the material of the Earth provide the possibility of evolving the animal-man to the stage of modern humanity. Thus, we have a predecessor to our Earth, which we call the lunar planet—a synthesis of our present-day Earth and the present-day Moon—that was cast off from it solely so that the purified substance could be obtained to bring forth humanity in the form in which it exists today.

[ 7 ] Even earlier, our Earth was a planet that spiritual science calls the “Sun,” though it, in turn, is not the same as today’s Sun. If you were to mix together today’s Earth, today’s Sun, and today’s Moon—along with all the beings that belong to them—you would obtain the planet that was the former Sun. Cosmically speaking, the Sun is, in its nature, a much higher being than our Earth. Its inhabitants are spiritual beings who always live in a state that a human being experiences only when he or she is in the Devachan world between death and a new birth. They are Devachanic beings whom we might call our Devachanic companions. In order for these beings—who had already passed through the stages that present-day humans go through—to ascend to this stage, they in turn had to cast off the Moon of that time, just as the Earth later cast off the present-day Moon. This had to be expelled from the Sun of that time, and as a result, that planet became a fixed star. A star is not a fixed star from the very beginning. In truth, a fixed star has developed from a planet. Our Earth, too, will one day become a fixed star; it will then also be a sun, and the inhabitants of Earth will then likewise have a spiritual existence, just as the inhabitants of the sun do today. For this to happen, however, the Moon first had to be cast off.

[ 8 ] This Sun, in turn, evolved from a planet so distant in the past that it is very difficult for humanity today to even conceive of it. This requires a high level of initiation. This planet is called “Saturn.” Saturn transformed into the Sun, the Sun into the Moon, the Moon into the Earth; the Earth will transform into “Jupiter,” Jupiter into “Venus,” and Venus into a planet known as “Vulcan.”

[ 9 ] Now, someone might ask: Venus is already visible in the sky today, and so is Jupiter—so how do all these planets relate to one another? It would be a completely false notion to think that humanity today has ever been to Saturn, which is out there in outer space. That would be the same as if you had a six-year-old child and a fifty-year-old man standing before you and believed that the child’s powers could ever be transferred to this man. The man, too, was once a six-year-old child; he went through exactly the same stage. The same is true of the present-day planet Saturn. It has nothing to do with Earth’s evolution, but it represents the stage in which Earth itself once was. Just as the fifty-year-old man was once the same as the six-year-old boy is now, so too was our Earth once in a state similar to that of present-day Saturn, the present-day Sun, and the present-day Moon. But when you look at present-day Venus, it represents a future state of the Earth. The Earth will one day be in such a state. Venus is not just any celestial body that humans will one day inhabit; rather, the Earth, too, will one day become Venus. These are generic terms that represent the respective stages of a planet.

[ 10 ] Just as the human being stands before you today, he consists of the physical body, which contains the same substances found throughout the entire mineral kingdom. Furthermore, he consists of the etheric body, which the plant also possesses; then the astral body, which the animal also possesses; and finally, the I. If we now go back to Saturn, human beings—the physical ancestors of humankind at that time—had nothing but the potential for the physical body. They first acquire the potential for the etheric body on the Sun, the potential for the astral body on the Moon, and the “I” develops on Earth. This is the meaning of the successive stages of development.

[ 11 ] However, on Saturn there was no such thing as a physical human body as we know it today. When Saturn was at its densest, it was like this: When I speak here, I cause the air to vibrate. If you did not need to hear my words, and if I could set the air in motion without speaking—if you could see the vibrations of my words—that is, the very specific movements of the air—then you would see images of my words. If you then knew the context, you could deduce from the vibrations what I had said. My words are the reason the air is moving here. Now imagine for a moment that you could cause the air waves to freeze completely in an instant: then my words would fall to the ground. You would have something like oyster shells on the earth, and you could see the shapes of my words in the solidified air. This is roughly how you must imagine the human body, the bodies of animals, plants, and mineral crystals on Saturn: dissolved from their solidified state down to an air-like state. For all of this once existed on Saturn only as a surging, undulating airy substance. What is a crystal today is solidified, billowing matter from Saturn. The same is true of plants and animals, which existed on Saturn as vibrations of the light, fine Saturnian matter. It was exactly as if higher spirits had spoken all beings into the Saturnian matter, just as I am speaking these vibrations into the air here. The creative spirits of Saturn set the Saturnian matter into inner vibrations, which were the precursors to the later plant, animal, and human bodies.

[ 12 ] This is the beginning of our evolution—“In the beginning was the Word.” The Word resonated through the Saturn matter, and all beings were in vibration within this Saturn matter. Think, by way of comparison, of Chladni’s sound figures: If you stroke a brass plate—which you have sprinkled with fine sand or dust—with a violin bow, you will see a wide variety of figures appear on the plate. This is because you held the plate steady and stroked it. By stroking it, you produce a tone with certain vibrations and lines. Where the plate does not vibrate, the dust remains; elsewhere, it shakes it off. Here you can, as it were, coax the figures out of the timbre, just as they were once—in the beginning, through the “Word”—spoken into matter. Matter is internally shaped and structured according to the laws of sound vibrations. Gradually, these vibrations have given rise to solid bodies.

[ 13 ] On the Sun, the etheric body was added and now spiritualized a portion of these forms that had developed on Saturn. The form spiritualized by it rose to a kind of plant existence. On the Moon, the astral body was added. Here, the beings rose to a kind of animal existence. On Earth, the endowment with the “I” was added. However, human beings on Earth could only come into being because what has become today’s physical lunar matter was cast off by Earth’s predecessor. Certain components will still need to be separated from Earth so that human beings can continue to evolve toward a Jupiter existence, then to Venus, and finally to Vulcan.

[ 14 ] Now you must understand that in occultism, a careful distinction is made between the first and second halves of the Earth’s history, because during the first half, the Earth underwent a transit through Mars. At that time, the capacity to produce warm, red blood was established. The Earth’s iron content originates from Mars, and the incorporation of iron into the blood is connected to this passage through Mars. The ancient Greek and Roman initiates, who knew that it was precisely through red blood that courage and aggressiveness were bestowed upon human beings, therefore designated Mars as the god of war. The names that astronomers today give to newly discovered celestial bodies are arbitrary. Back then, a name was still regarded as something derived from the very nature of the thing itself. The courageous nature of the soul is thus connected to the forces that the Earth owes to Mars. Thus, Mars, as the embodiment of courage, was given the name of the god of war. In contrast, the second half of the Earth is increasingly connected to forces that the Earth will owe to Mercury. The Earth’s connection to Mercury, however, is of a more spiritual nature.

[ 15 ] So you have, as the various stages of our planet: Saturn, the Sun, the Moon, Mars—because their influence was strong—then Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. This is then expressed in the sequence of the days of the week. The initiates expressed the sequence of earthly incarnations in the names of the days of the week. You must begin with Saturday, which was Saturn’s day. It is still called Saturday in English and Zaterdag in Dutch. Then comes Sunday, Monday—Mars Day, “mardi” in French; in Old Germanic, Ziu was the god of war, hence “Ziustag,” or “Tuesday” in English. Wednesday is a more exoteric name; among the ancients it was called “Mercury Day,” “mercredi” in French, and “Wodanstag” in Germanic—because Wodan is a Mercury entity—“Woensdag” in Dutch, “Wednesday” in English. Then we have Jupiter’s day, “jeudi” in French. The German Jupiter is Donar, the Thunderer, hence “Donnerstag.” Then comes Venus’s day, “vendredi” in French, “Freyatag” in German. And then it starts all over again, because Vulcan is a new stage of Saturn.

[ 16 ] Everything I have just described to you, this human body has experienced to a certain degree. The traces of what was movement on Saturn are now present in the physical body as vibrational processes. So when the physical body develops during the first seven years, this is a kind of repetition of the Saturn existence; that is why, in occultism, the period from the first to the seventh year—that is, until the teeth begin to fall out—is called the time of the Saturn existence. The same forces are at work here that first appeared in their initial form back when the human being was developed on Saturn solely in terms of the physical body. Then the etheric body is born, and with it the forces associated with the Solar phase. We call the period from the seventh to the fourteenth or sixteenth year of life, during which these forces are active, the human’s “Sun existence.” You must be clear about the fact that all the forces that were present in the human being back then emerge as the forces of blossoming life—that is, the solar forces—and develop during the period from the time of the change of teeth until sexual maturity. This is not unimportant for the following reason: one can only begin to understand, even a little, the connection between these human forces and the corresponding modern forms of those stars when one recalls the time when the Earth itself was a similar star. Thus, forces are at work in the child up to the age of seven that are also related to present-day Saturn. Here you see the first inner seed of that vast and powerful wisdom handed down as astrology from the times of the truly great initiates—a wisdom that is no longer understood at all today. Because there is an inner connection between Saturn and childhood, you can now understand how these things are intrinsically linked. Likewise, you can see how the forces of the Sun itself are drawn out. What is important for the human being later in life was completed through the Moon and the Earth: the formative forces are particularly important for human development from the seventh year until sexual maturity. This, in turn, gives you a true insight into how extraordinarily important it is that children, especially during this period, maintain a deeper connection—in relation to their etheric body—to what is called the spiritual Sun.

[ 17 ] Here you can see the more esoteric connection between things, which I have already hinted at in my public lecture. Above all, remember that during this period it is particularly important to instill a sense of beauty in the child. If you do not instill a sense of beauty in them during this period, you cannot make up for it later, because entirely different forces will be at work by then. This period is closely connected to the perception of light and shadow, and there is nothing better you can do than to teach the child a sense of light and shadow. I know a prominent art historian who once complained quite bitterly: “You’re supposed to give people lectures on art history. When I try to make it understandable to them and show them pictures, they have no idea. The young people come from high school and have no sense of light and shadow; they can’t even understand why a hand is foreshortened; one could build on light and shadow in the broadest sense, but people have very little sense of it.”

[ 18 ] People can develop a sense of beauty only when they learn to understand what makes the Sun beautiful on Earth—the spiritual deeds of the Sun. This is very important. The beings of the Sun have a spiritual-divine existence. That is why it is also necessary for religious development to begin at this time. This is connected with the development of the human etheric body. Just as the Sun, in the course of cosmic evolution, was able to elevate the existence of its beings to the level of spirits, so too is the human being capable, as an educator, of awakening in the child—between the change of teeth and sexual maturity—a receptivity and a feeling for the purely spiritual and for the religious, because that is when the solar body develops freely in all directions.

[ 19 ] From the age of fourteen to twenty-one or twenty-three, you then experience the “lunar phase” of human existence, during which the astral body comes to the fore. This is the epoch of existence in which the instincts that must be combated in the most eminent sense easily come to the fore; everything that cannot be purified must be cast off. What emerges is what must sometimes truly be treated like the dross of the Moon; indeed, much must be cast out, just as happened with the Moon.

[ 20 ] We could take a deeper look into this very period and would see how deeply human beings are connected to the entire structure of the universe. We would see how, in fact, because human beings are unable to expel certain forces—which are actually lunar forces—from within themselves, those terrible illnesses arise that are referred to as “youthful folly” or “dementia praecox.” This is a specific phenomenon whose peculiar symptomatic character reveals how it clings to the astral body, which is just taking shape out of the etheric body. Try observing a person who, upon reaching sexual maturity, slips into dementia praecox. Strange symptoms arise that reveal a peculiar compulsion toward repetition. The astral body is sometimes very intelligent, but the way in which the astral body is supposed to relate to the etheric body is in disarray. Ask such a person, for example: “What is five times six?” — They answer: “Thirty.” — “What is seven times eight?” — “Thirty.” — “What is six times nine?” — “Thirty.” — “And so on, always thirty.” This is a kind of memory glitch, and so you can imagine how he cannot emerge from the stage of the etheric body, how he cannot bring about the Lunar Age for himself. From such perspectives, one can shine a light deep into the microcosm.

[ 21 ] From the age of twenty-one to twenty-eight or thirty, we experience the human being’s Mars phase. It is precisely during this time that the courageous character of the human being emerges through the blood sphere. It is no coincidence that people are called to Mars service during these very years. In part, these things happen instinctively. In many cases, they are also traditions stemming from what was once known spiritually.

[ 22 ] Then come the preparations for future ages. As the soul is left more and more to its own devices, it initiates within the human being the process that will unfold cosmically with the Earth. Something will detach itself from the Earth so that it can rise higher, up toward Jupiter. And human beings are already beginning this process today. Here, too, the human being is a microcosm. Something inner breaks away and develops into that freedom of the soul we call the Mercury stage, which reaches its peak in the thirty-fifth year of life. People speak of middle age, just as they have not without reason called seventy the age of the patriarch. Thus, at the age of thirty-five, the human being gains his independence. He enters the age in which he not only experiences things but also strengthens and consolidates what he has experienced inwardly. Through the firmly established will, the human body is left to its own devices, and the inner self consolidates. Now a person becomes a source of advice for those around them. Their judgment now holds value for others. Previously, they were meant to listen to the world; now the world can listen to them. This is important, for many mistakes are made in this regard. Above all, a person harms themselves if they step forward and dispense advice before reaching the age of maturity—the middle of life. If they see themselves merely as a student who repeats what they have heard, they will not create such obstacles for themselves as they do when they present all sorts of things as their own teachings. In doing so, they effectively render their best abilities useless. Knowledge can be acquired beforehand, but wisdom is something that must be developed from within. Knowledge is what one must first gather and what can then become wisdom.

[ 23 ] The Age of Jupiter then begins at the age of forty-nine, during which the soul becomes even freer within itself by surrendering the body even further to its own devices and developing within itself the qualities that contain the best powers for transitioning into the Age of Venus, which begins in the sixty-third and sixty-fourth years of life. By then, the inner self has consolidated to such an extent that the human being, through beautiful development, can have shed all outward egoism. By then, he has only love for what exists in the world. He no longer wants anything for himself; he is now there for those around him. Humanity is only now beginning to develop this in its very earliest stages, which is why it is still difficult to speak of it today.

[ 24 ] In spiritual science, one speaks of a sevenfold life course and demonstrates, in this context as well, how to understand the human being as a microcosm that looks back on a past cosmic epoch and points toward a future evolution. Thus, the human being is born out of the universe—not only from the past, but there is also something prophetic in the entirety of their development that points toward a future epoch. And what is to happen there is already happening today in the course of human life. Therefore, it is not entirely nonsensical to say that the human being truly comes to know their own self when they come to know the evolution of the world. When a person lets their gaze wander from Saturn to Venus, they see in the greater world what is unfolding in their own existence. This is the connection between the human being and the entire cosmos. If you imagine human beings, just as they are, with all their organs distributed throughout the cosmos, you will arrive at the concept already preserved in an ancient Central European myth. According to this myth, the entire universe was created from a primordial human being, the giant Ymir: the vault of heaven from his skull, the rivers from his blood, the mountains from his bones, and so on. The myths of Osiris and Dionysus express a similar idea. So when we speak of the divided primordial human, we mean nothing other than that the entire cosmos can be found within the human being; and when the human being enters the cosmos, he finds his own existence magnified within it. We must expand our own understanding to encompass an understanding of the world, rather than brooding over our inner selves. Just as we regard ourselves within the body in which our soul and spirit are concentrated, so may we regard the great body—which is the expanded image of our own body—as the divine body, as the image of the world spirit; and in self-knowledge we have knowledge of the world and knowledge of God.

[ 25 ] Thus, human beings are born from the Divine and can gradually draw closer to it again through their knowledge of the Divine. Entering into the cosmos and embracing worldly existence with all the powers of the human soul: this is the attitude that can arise within us through spiritual science. Through it, the human being learns to regard the world as a great body of the Divine, and learns how his or her self has emerged from this body. If one first learns to sense this through spiritual science, this sensation ultimately transforms into a feeling of divinity. With this feeling, with this experience, what a person can learn through the spiritual scientific worldview is fulfilled—albeit in the very distant future.